Chapter Five #2
Seb leaned over to the table and picked up Hill’s abandoned cup of coffee. He tipped his head back and poured it into the dog’s mouth, long tongue lapping it out of the air.
“Tell that to the men at the end of the tunnel when they get out their burlap sacks,” he said as he set the cup down and glanced briefly at Hill to enjoy his disturbed reaction to that. “But this is sophistry, and that’s a Thoth’s remit. We’re men of the world.”
“I would not describe myself like that,” Hill said.
He wasn’t sweating. That was one advantage to being disembodied, apparently. The sensation of knowing he should have been was almost as distracting, though. He shifted and resisted the urge to mop his face for nonexistent drops.
Seb wiped his mouth on his sleeve, fresh stains joining old ones on the cuff. “You used to be simple.”
“Me?”
“The living. The invokers. When they called the dead they wanted punishment, plenty, or both. Then you discovered solipsism and nihilism and priapism.”
Hill blinked. One of those things was not like the others, but he wasn’t sure if Seb was aware of that or not. While he tried to decide if it was mockery or ignorance, Seb chuntered on.
“Now they pull us up from the grave dirt, brush the worms from our brow, and shake us down for contentment or fairness or justice… Give me the days when all you had to do was scare up a turkey for a feast or scare some syphilitic old bastard to death.”
“And what you got in return was a…catspaw?”
Seb held a finger up. “No. That’s penitence,” he said.
“An act of service to discharge the spiritual judgment against us. That exchange is baked in. This is more…like double-dipping. You get a little something extra than what you asked for, and in return you act in our interests in the mortal world.”
He held up one hand, cupped as if he held what he was talking about already in it.
“Answers about dear old Dad,” he said. Then his other hand came up to join it. “Little bit of necromancy. Who’s it going to hurt?”
The implication there was “no one,” but Seb had always pointedly not promised that. Hill picked absently at a hangnail on his thumb as he tried to find the answer in the static of things in his head.
He already knew his dad hadn’t killed himself, so was it a “want” or a “need” to have an answer as to why Fraser had done it? On the other hand, he didn’t want to know what else his dad had done for Fraser, or why, but part of him dug its heels in on needing that information.
How could he demand anything of Fraser if he just handwaved away any of his dad’s sins?
Did his mom know…
No.
“No.”
He’d not meant to say that out loud. Seb looked startled at it. The corner of his mouth curled up to reveal the ragged row of teeth and the wet, red inner lip. Slobber pooled and dripped.
The thought of the offer being retracted cut through Hill’s doubts like a hot knife. It was only Fraser’s voice in his head that stopped him.
“Make them wait.” The rough, clipped advice had been delivered dispassionately long enough ago that Hill couldn’t remember what the negotiation had been about.
A bike. Pocket money. Skipping therapy. It could have been any of them.
“You already know how badly you want it. Find out if they want it more.”
“Not yet,” Hill choked out. He pressed his thumb down hard into his thigh. The pain didn’t work quite as well as with meat and bone, but it still helped focus him. “I need to think about it.”
Seb wiped a string of drool off his lips with his thumb.
“You don’t have much time.”
“I have some.”
Seb took a deep breath, a flash of pink just visible as his wet black nose flared. “Usually this is a ‘take it or leave it’ offer,” he said. “You need us more than we need you after all, but I like you.”
It was not. He did not. Hill hated the fact that he needed to be grateful to Fraser for something else.
“Here.” Seb produced a card from his pocket and leaned over the table to offer it. The thick, glossy black stock was pinched between his two dirty fingers. “When you decide, call me.”
Hill took the card. It was blank. He turned it over twice to make sure. “Um…how?”
Despite everything there was something bizarrely, infectiously compelling about the big, toothy smile that Seb directed at Hill. He winked at him.
“Think about it,” he said. Then he twitched his head around sharply.
It took a second, but then the insistent, shrill tone of a fire alarm cut through the air of the room.
Seb’s head twisted, lip curled, and he physically grabbed his muzzle in one hand to pull it back down.
Between his fingers, he said, “Well, I think that’s our cue, Mr. Rosen. Give my best to Arms.”
It was hard enough to think with the fire alarm scrambling Hill’s brain. The abrupt dismissal left him even more flat-footed, and he gawped at Seb. A snarl pulled Seb’s muzzle tight, and he slapped his hand on the desk.
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
” he snapped. The crack of flesh on wood made Hill flinch, but didn’t help him pull together the disparate threads needed to move.
There was too much going on, and it rattled through him as he— Mid-panic, Seb suddenly switched to affable as he pushed the plate of cookies forward. “And do feel free to help yourself.”
Hill stared at him. He wished it was that easy, but he was locked down. Locked in. His brain wouldn’t stop screaming, and his body was stuck in sleep mode. He couldn’t even breathe easily; every breath squeezed through the tight grip on his throat.
Then he realized he already had a cookie in his hand. He could feel the dry, crumbly texture against his fingers and smell the sweetness of it as he pulled it back. It didn’t smell like heartbreak or grief or anything but a cookie.
For a second his jaw ached with the urge to take a bite, just to confirm the content of the confection. He managed to squelch it and grab a napkin to wrap it in as he stood up.
“I’ll think about what you said, but…” Hill stumbled over his own tongue, then looked past Seb’s shoulder at the window. Dudley-in-Death spread out behind the glass, ramshackle and stitched together. It was bigger than the real one…the living world’s one. “My dad. Is he out there?”
Seb just tapped a finger against his wet nose.
“You know how to find out.”
Hill supposed he did. His hand tightened around his contraband, and he felt it break within the flimsy wrapper. Crumbs spilled between his fingers onto the floor. Still on autopilot, he shoved the napkin in his pocket and turned to leave.
“If I were you, I’d not tell Arms about my offer,” Seb said to the tense spot between Hill’s shoulders. “He was bad when he died, and he ain’t got no better.”
Hill nodded his acknowledgement of that without looking around. It was true. Davy was self-interested and amoral, and possibly a contract killer. He hadn’t claimed otherwise, though. That was more than Hill could say of most people in his life.
He let himself out.
The receptionist was on her break.
A jack from the board was plugged into her ear, and she stared with placid amusement at nothing while she ate a sandwich. The fleck of mayo on her painted red lip made Hill’s hand move to his confection-stuffed pocket to check it was still there.
It was safe to assume that all food in the Beyond shared the same quality, as far as being a medium for memory went. That just unlocked a cascade of other questions in Hill’s mind.
Did the memory adhere to the whole food, or could something layered like a sandwich retain different qualities with each slice?
What if someone ate something and halfway through the meal something happened, bad or good? Would the “taste” here change halfway through?
Did someone need to eat the food in order for it to manifest in the Beyond, or did some of it have the memory of it being made inside?
He was so engrossed in his thoughts, he tripped over something on the ground.
Before he could measure the length of himself, a loop of something warm and firm caught his elbow.
He steadied himself and gave the tentacle a distracted pat…
until he looked around to see what he’d tripped on and saw another tentacle pull sheepishly out of view.
Another rose up in front of him and offered the hoodie he’d lost earlier back, the black fabric slung over the end of the tentacle by the hood.
“They like you,” Davy said from the low-slung steel and leather chair he sprawled in.
The lengths of his tentacles were tangled around his feet, some lazily draped over his thigh like a favored pet, while others picked and poked boredly at the carpet or a discarded pen.
He pulled a chewed paper stick out of his mouth and tossed it to the tentacles.
They tried to catch it, but it fell right through them and landed on the carpet. “They’d have let most people fall.”
One foot was braced on an old, battered-looking duffel on the floor. The other was propped up on the low coffee table, dirt smudged over the December edition of the Things to Do in Dudley magazine from the Dudley Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
It had a list of local graveyards in it, along with a curated selection of historical untimely deaths in case anyone wanted to risk trying to raise the spirits.
For the first time, Hill wondered if the dead got fed up with that.
“Then why trip me to start with?” he asked as he took his hoodie and shrugged it back on.
Davy reached down to give the tentacle slung over his knee an affectionate slap. “That’s ’cause they’re assholes,” he said. “They are sins, remember?”
He lifted his foot off the table and grabbed the duffel with one hand. It got slung easily over his shoulder as he stood up, with the sort of careless grace Hill was, again, vaguely irritated to realize, came from his body.
“Or you’re an asshole,” he pointed out.
Davy smirked as he started toward the main doors. “Naw,” he said. “I’d have let you fall. I’ve no problem with the idea of you face down on the floor.”
This time Hill didn’t need any help to stumble. He caught himself and gave Davy’s back a hard look as he tried to work out what that meant. Insulting or…suggestive.
He’d just about settled on insult when one of Davy’s restless tentacles wove back. It wrapped around his thigh, warm and solidly muscular, and goosed him. He jumped, and the tentacle whipped away, grazing between his legs as it went.
Usually it was heat. The sticky, inconsiderate flush of hunger that kindled in his balls and spread up to prickle at the back of his neck and the tips of his ears like sunburn. The mix of discomfort and desire was familiar, even though a lot of it had been…solo engagements.
This felt different.
No warmth. No tightness in his chest as his breath caught. Instead, he felt a shift in the pit of his stomach, like the way sand slipped on the beach.
It was strange, but then so was the fact that it had been in response to a caress from a tentacle with no respect for personal space.
Hill groped through his memory for a second for the exact way Davy had put it.
We have some fun and we learn some important lessons.
Something like that. Hill guessed this could count.
He filed it away to think about later and broke into a jog to catch up with Davy before the main doors swung closed behind him. Hill supposed there was some way to get out—logically, there had to be—but he didn’t want to have to ask.
To Hill’s surprise, Davy stuck his arm back to brace the heavy glass door from closing. Hill muttered thanks as he ducked under it. He wondered briefly what would happen if he did try to just walk through it instead. The wave of nausea that hit him was vicious enough to feel like a warning.
He stopped to let it ebb again and looked at Davy.
“What happened to Reynolds?” he asked.
A smirk crooked the corner of Davy’s mouth as he tilted his head back, one hand raised to shade his eyes. His hair had been shorter than Hill’s. The overlay faded away into an ombre of black curls at the end of caramel brown waves.
“He put something in his mouth that disagreed with him,” he said. “I don’t think he’s going to make the party.”
Hill grimaced at the reminder.
“Lucky him,” he muttered sourly.
It made Davy laugh, a low, unforced snort of amusement. Unlike the strange experience of getting turned on while dead, Hill was very familiar with the queasy, heady feeling that pushed at the walls of his chest.
Great, Hill thought sourly to himself as he padded along in Davy’s shadow. He had a crush on the vengeful spirit. Hill thought being turned on by tentacles was probably the healthier of the two.